Personal blog where I share my thoughts/lessons/achievements

How to Use Self-Talk to Overcome Laziness

Have you ever wondered why is it so hard to do something even when you clearly know that‘s what you have to do? Instead you just sit on your computer and surf internet mindlessly, doing whatever comes to your mind but not the task you have to do. Don’t worry you are not alone there. It happend to all of us over and over again, because there there is something we didn‘t knew before or wasn‘t aware about ourselves. I would like to share with you a simple technique that could literally change you and the way you deal with lazyness.

Every person has its own two sides. I‘m not talking about multi-personality or other stuff. I‘m talking about two of our sides – disciplined and lazy side. If you are aware, most of our times we are lazy and even when we want to be disciplined, we find some other activities to keep us busy from doing what we have to. That‘s the lazy side effect. It talks with you subconsciously. You are simply not aware of this. The lazy side has its own tactics against your disciplined side. I don‘t want to get down with lazy side, just want to let you be aware of this side and that it influence your actions subconsciously.

There is one way you can overcome your lazy side and it‘s called Self-Talk. I bet you heard that before, but you may think it‘s a fluff or it‘s not effective at all. Self-talk is what you say to yourself that effects your decisions, behaviors and actions. There are broader self-talk uses but for now we are going to focus on how to overcome laziness.

For self-talk to be effective it must be action-orientated and:

· Positive

· Specific

· Present tense

For example imagine yourself sitting on your computer and surfing facebook and you know that you must write an essay for your homework. You are aware of what you have to do but you just can‘t start with it…you just want to check another picture of your friend or write another comment. So in order to start to write your essay simply say tioyourself „I am writing now an essey“.

You would immediately notice how your whole body starts to react to what you say. Whatever you are doing at the moment (looking in facebook) would become irritating. You would feel urge to start writing your essay. Your whole body reacts to your message. Your feets will face the table where you keep your sheets and pencils. The more you repeat the same positive, specific and present message, the more you will be tempted to complete your task.

You may wonder how is it possbile. Basiclly, whatever you say to yourself effects your subconscious mind. Whenever you say in present time, you convince your mind that you are actually doing that task and that‘s why your whole body reacts to self-talk.

I have putted together a scheme of how does self-talk works:

As you can see most expression are self-limiting. For example when you have to do something you might say „I must do it“, but what you are actually saying to yourself is that you are being forced to do something against your own will and that‘s why you resist such task. Forcing yourself to do something only increases resistance.

But when you say „I choose to…“ then you give options to yourself and reduce the resistance. You would feel much happier to start with that kind of task.

So everytime you will hear speaking to yourself negatively about some sort of work, change it with positive, specific and present self-talk.

TIP To make it even more effective say it aloud. This way your speaking and hearing will involve which in turn will give you more power over completing the task. The more of senses involves in doing something, the more likely you will actually doing it. The key here is repetition. Say it as much as possible until your mind doesn’t have any other choice but to believe and do it.

Hope this new knowledge will be a good helper while dealing with your lazy side.